Meridian - A Novel In Time (The Meridian Series) Page 9

  What was that future, he wondered? His own theorem of time dictated that it was impossible to return to any moment on the continuum when you actually lived. The visitor was an elderly man in his seventies. That meant he came from a time at least seventy years in the future—from the end of the twenty-first century, or beyond. What had happened to him?

  He considered the possibilities while he watched Maeve’s ever more frustrated search for the note. One thought gave him hope: if the mission Mr. Graves had been sent on was to succeed, then the Palma Event would be undone, and what reason would he have for being here in the first place? Paradox, in all its confounding majesty, loomed heavily over the situation. Would that explain his sudden disappearance? But why now? We haven’t gone through the Arch yet, and might never go through the Arch. We still have to work out the numbers and time is running short. Yet Graves had vanished. If it was Paradox that had reclaimed him, then something has already altered the time continuum so radically that his mission here was made ludicrous. Could the answer lie with Kelly? With the note? Was there another Pushpoint trigger hiding in something as simple as Maeve’s inherent civility that led her to take the man’s coat?

  “Did someone have the note?” Maeve looked around, giving the others a glance that was half accusing but was becoming ever more sheepish as each second passed.

  “It’s gone, isn’t it.” Paul spoke in a quiet voice.

  “You had it for a moment, Robert, didn’t you?” Maeve pointed an accusing finger.

  “I just left it on the bookcase,” said Nordhausen. “Didn’t you take it with you?”

  “Well, I thought I had it right here in my pocket.” Maeve looked around as if she might find it on the seat of the vehicle.

  “Did you bring the man’s coat?” Nordhausen pressed her.

  “I left it on the study table, but…”

  “It’s probably gone as well.” Paul folded his arms, still thinking.

  “What are you getting at?” Nordhausen nudged him.

  “The man is gone, the note is gone; you get my point, professor. Something’s happened to the continuum.”

  “What? Are you saying things have already changed?”

  “Yes,” Paul was certain now. “Kelly’s alive, for one thing. We’re heading for U.C. Berkeley in his car instead of the hospital in my car. We’re in a Deep Nexus now, a kind of no man’s land on the time continuum. None of this was supposed to happen, so it’s very tentative until we achieve our final outcome. It’s not fixed yet; not solid. I’m not quite sure yet, but I think Mr. Graves’ job was accomplished. A Meridian of time is in play here, and he’s stuck the first needle in.”

  “He said that,” said Nordhausen. “Those were his exact words!”

  “No,” Paul corrected him, “he said we had to stick the needle in. It’s like acupuncture.” The image was clear in his mind. “The Palma Event was so traumatic to the continuum that it needed intervention at more than one point on the Time Meridian. Mr. Graves stuck the first needle in when he stepped in front of Kelly’s car and prevented the accident that was supposed to take his life. The rest is up to us. The coat and the note were very odd. Without Maeve’s polite manner we might never have had those clues. This may seem strange, but I’m beginning to think time is on our side in this one. The horrible violence of the Palma Event has somehow been such a violation that she may just be smiling on us now. Yes, some sort of complication may have snatched away our visitor, but at least we all saw the note—right? We all remember it.”

  “Then what was that last number?” Nordhausen reiterated his quest. “If Kelly’s right then it must be the last coordinate—the spatial coordinate we need for the Arch.”

  No one could remember the number. They had been so taken by the rush of the moment that it just didn’t have time to register in anyone’s head. “I know it was K17 something,” Maeve repeated.

  Nordhausen had a small pocket flashlight out and was squinting at his Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He was certain there would be some reference in the book to the number—but what? The thing to do was to find Lawrence’s diaries for the month of November, 1917. What exactly was he up to that month? He renewed his search with dogged determination, certain he could unravel the last clue.

  “Let me think,” he spoke aloud. “They had already taken Akaba that summer by mounting a raid from the landward side. After Lawrence crossed the Sinai to bring news of the raid to Cairo, he eventually rejoined his Arab cohorts. Now what was he up to in November? Ah! Here it is.”

  “What is it?” Dorland leaned over trying to see where the professor’s finger pressed against a line of text in a circle of wan yellow light from the flashlight. The light fluttered and grew weaker.

  “November, nineteen seventeen…” Nordhausen read aloud. “I have rejoined Auda and his followers with the aim of causing some mischief along the route of the Hejaz…” The flashlight suddenly went out.

  “Damn!” Nordhausen shook the light, and it fluttered on briefly before failing again. “Of all the time for the batteries to fail! Has someone got a match?”

  “Does that help?” Kelly switched on a small ceiling light.

  “Good man, Kelly” The professor bent over his volume again, angling the book to cast as much light as possible on the page of interest. “Yes, it’s right here. Lawrence was asked to put pressure on the Hejaz Railway. He made raids against the line at numerous points in October and November; the first at Kilometer 587, then at Kilometer 489 and later at 172.”

  “That’s it!” Maeve was certain of the last number on the note now. “It was K172. What an elegant way to note the exact spatial location! We have to be at Kilometer 172 on the Hejaz Railway when Lawrence makes his raid. You were correct, Robert. Everything on that note was of great significance. Our visitor managed to deliver his message, in a way he never intended, but deliver it he has.”

  Nordhausen snapped the book shut. “Great!” He was relieved to have the burden of making the exact call on the spatial coordinates removed from his shoulders. “You know it could have taken us months to discover that. Oh, we could have just picked a time and place in November of that year, but then we’d be right back in the same situation as with the Crusades. Where do we go? What do we do? Now we at least have a good fix on the where.” He came up short, meeting another obstacle in his thinking. “Lord, how are we going to manage this? We can’t just appear in the middle of the attack—or worse yet, on a moving train.”

  “Train? Why would we want to be on the train?”

  “Because that’s where Masaui is likely to be. It’s his fate that matters most here.”

  Paul agreed with him at once. “Yes, then we have to board the train before it starts off on its journey. When we get to the Computer Library focus your research on finding us a good boarding point. We’ll need to configure the Arch to open a breaching point at a place where we won’t be noticed by the locals. Then we get on the train and it takes us out to Kilometer 172 for the raid.” He smiled. All we have to do is discover who this Masaui is and what we have to do about him.”

  “That may be trickier than you think,” said Maeve. “You say this train is operated by the Ottoman Turks? Well, what would four English speaking passengers be doing aboard? We’ll need much more than appropriate clothing. We’ll need some sort of documentation to justify our presence on the train. For that matter, what about effects? We’ll need period specific money and who knows what else. The devil is in the details, you know. We could run into trouble right from the beginning if we don’t plan this correctly. Suppose we have trouble boarding the train?”

  “We’ll have to work something out.”

  “I’ll dig up everything I possibly can on the incident. But Maeve makes a good point. Suppose we do manage to slip onto the train unnoticed. Suppose we even manage to make the ride out to Kilometer 172 without any undue attention being paid to us. There’s still the matter of the raid.”

  “Yes,” Kelly piped up from the driver’s seat.
“I saw the damn movie! They weren’t taking prisoners on those raids.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Nordhausen chided him. “You can’t base your history on the dramatic portrayal of the movie.”

  “Well he still makes a good point,” said Maeve. “It’s going to be dangerous. We’ll be riding on a train that will come under attack, and who knows what could happen.”

  “I said it was going to be dangerous,” said Paul. “A far cry from sitting quietly in the Globe and watching Shakespeare. But whatever the risk, we have to try. The consequences of failing are just too great.”

  “Outcomes and Consequences,” said Maeve, lapsing into thought for a moment. “God only knows what happens if the water hits the east coast in the morning. Whatever it was, it was enough to send them back here on a very risky mission. Perhaps it cost Graves his life. Are we prepared to risk the same?”

  She let that sink in for a moment, and they all sat in silence. Kelly shifted the gears as they rounded the bend and entered the U.C. Berkeley campus. He was soon speeding toward the library and, as he drove, a thought suddenly occurred to him. He, of all people, wasn’t supposed to be here.

  “Do we all have to take the risk?” His thought emerged.

  “What?” Nordhausen looked up from his book.

  “I mean… why do we all have to go? Doesn’t that just complicate matters for us on that end?”

  “Well,” said Nordhausen, “I suppose there’s no reason for you and Maeve to come along. I’ll be needed for the history, of course, and if Paul would be so bold as to accompany me, then perhaps the two of us could handle it. Then Kelly could run numbers and work the Arch from this end, and Maeve could watch the variance factors and help program the retraction.”

  “You can count on me, Robert.” Paul assured his friend he was willing to go.

  “No, you don’t understand.” Kelly groped through his reasoning again. “I’m the one person here who is already supposed to be dead. Remember? I was…Well, I was just thinking that perhaps I should be the one to go. The rest of you stay here where it’s safe.”

  “Oh no you don’t!” Paul moved to quash the idea at once. “Look Kelly, you may have a point. This whole notion of your death has really gotten to me. As I said earlier, we’re already off on some new Meridian now. Time is branching here in the Nexus Point. This is another life—not only for you, but for all of us. Whatever happens, I can’t let you take any unusual risks for a while. I couldn’t bear to loose you, buddy.”

  “Nor I,” Maeve said quietly. She gave Kelly a lingering glance.

  “Let’s everyone think this over while we run the numbers,” Paul suggested. “We’ll decide who goes and who stays later. In the meantime, we have to plan as if we were all going, Maeve. Work whatever magic you can at the Drama Department wardrobe. I know you’ll come up with something. Robert and I will work out the details.”

  The SUV sped along Hearst Avenue to the North Gate of the University. Kelly squinted through the front windshield, looking for parking. He was fortunate to find something immediately and Nordhausen had the back door open in a moment, heedless of the rain. “Come on,” he shouted in at them. “Time and tide wait for no man!”

  How appropriate, thought Dorland. He visualized the great swelling of the ocean as it hurtled west from Palma, fast leaving the shattered remnants of the Azores in its wake. They couldn’t save Bermuda, but the fate of the Eastern Seaboard was still riding in the whirlwind of time.

  6

  U.C. Berkeley, California - 12:20 AM

  They made their way over the rain swept pavement past the Earth Sciences Building and the Memorial Glade until they reached the main library in the center of the campus. Thankfully, the lights were still on, and Paul started to lead them toward the entrance.

  “Not that way,” Nordhausen called after him. “We’ll go in the back way. I have a pass key.”

  Paul reversed his course, and the others followed until they reached a nondescript doorway in a sheltered alcove. The Professor fumbled with his wallet for a moment, extracting his pass key card to log in through the security gate. In a few moments they tramped inside, grateful to be out of the driving rain and cold. The moment of respite was a brief one, however, and they were soon animated by the urgency of their mission.

  “Storm must have everyone hunkered down in the dorms,” said Nordhausen.

  “That or the news,” said Dorland. He suddenly remembered it was also Memorial Day weekend, and the normal library traffic would be thinned out by the holiday. “I think our chances of finding an open computer terminal will be very good.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” said Kelly, hastening off to find a terminal where he could interface his laptop with the Arion mainframe humming away in the lower level of the library. “Get me spatial data as soon as you can,” he shouted over his shoulder as he ran.

  Nordhausen was already moving toward a catalog terminal to begin with his research queries. Paul and Maeve followed in his wake, still catching their breath from the rush across the campus grounds. Maeve caught the time on a wall clock. It was just after midnight.

  “What about that costume run, Maeve?” Paul asked.

  “Well, I need something more to go on than the date,” she replied. “Any ideas at this point, Robert?”

  “Give me a few moments,” said the professor. “I’ll get Kelly his spatial numbers and then we can decide how we’re going to make our entry. God, I wish we had a week to plan this.”

  “We’ll just have to pull it through as best we can,” Paul encouraged him as he settled into a terminal next to Nordhausen and keyed in catalog searches. “Many hands make for light work,” he smiled, but the tension was obvious as the two men hunched over the keyboards. “What should I look for, Professor?”

  Nordhausen balled his fist at his chin for a moment. “Why not run genealogy queries on the names we have on the note? Don’t bother with Lawrence, of course. But give that other fellow a try—what was it, Maeve?”

  “Masaui. But don’t ask me to spell it.” They were both thankful for her memory of the note, as it lived only in their combined recollection now.

  “I doubt if we’ll find much locally,” said Paul. “I better ask for an Internet search as well.” He was soon discouraged to find thousands of useless references, and began scouring his brain to try and narrow down his search. Nordhausen saw what he was doing and tossed in a few ideas.

  “Include the word genealogy,” he said. “You should get some common name combinations that way.” He flipped open his copy of the Seven Pillars, glancing at the brief introductory poem Lawrence had written there.

  “I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands, and wrote my will across the sky in stars, to earn you Freedom, the seven pillared worthy house, that your eyes might be shining for me when we came…”

  “What was that?” Paul was struck by the poignancy of the words.

  “Lawrence,” said Nordhausen. “Funny how those same tides of men have now swelled the oceans with our impending doom. And the odd thing is, they’re still reaching for the same thing Lawrence wanted: their freedom. Why is it we can’t seem to understand that and find a way to give it to them?”

  “Is it ours to give?” said Paul rhetorically. “If I’m not mistaken the Founding Fathers seemed to believe that all men were created that way—free. We’ve tried to be the guarantor of that over here, but I think this business with the Holy Fighters is more than a struggle for liberation. There’s hard vengeance in this act. You don’t go and do something like this without being dead inside; heartless and cruel. Nothing could condone the death of so many innocents.”

  “True, this Ra’id Husan al Din is no saint, but who plunged the knife into his chest? This is a struggle that has been going on for a hundred generations, Paul. The Islamic world has lived in the shadow of the West for over a millennium. That shadow was once the threat of mounted knights on chargers marching to the holy land—now it has become somethin
g far more insidious. Face it, we’ve sucked the life out of these people like we’ve pumped the oil from under their desert. I would say they feel as threatened by us today as they ever did during the Crusades. They handled Pope Urban’s vigilantes easily enough, but how do you strike at something as all pervading as a culture? We don’t send soldiers to conquer our enemies any longer. We send television sets. These people have lived in the pristine clarity of their deserts for thousands of years until we came along with our thirst for petroleum. Now they’ve got McDonalds in Mecca, the Fifth Fleet plying the waters of the Persian Gulf, stealth bombers circling on standby over their heads and special forces teams out hunting down their heroes. I know, we see these men as murderers and terrorists, but to the average Moslem on the street, this Palma thing will be seen as holy retribution.”

  “Hell, they killed their own people in the Western Sahara.”

  “Martyrs,” said Nordhausen. “Yes, it’s a twisted thing in our minds, but that’s the way these guys see it. They won’t be satisfied until we pack up and leave them alone, and as long as they are sitting on the fermented remains of all those dearly departed dinosaurs—the oil—well, we want to be darn sure we get our daily deliveries. Something like this was bound to happen one way or another. Face it, the typical Arab ‘man in the street’ is a person without a credit profile. He wants to rise and take his morning prayer instead of running out to a one day sale event at Sears. They’re different. That’s the only thing we can come down to, and that difference has produced men like Husan al Din.”